On Air Now
Rob Howard and Kelly Brook 4pm - 7pm
Dougie Poynter reveals the worst thing about UK festivals and addresses McFly reunion rumours
24 June 2019, 14:37
The musician, author, model and activist recent spoke to Heart about the negative impact festivals can have on the environment and what can be done to tackle this.
McFly band member and environmental activist Dougie Poynter has recently announced his new book, 'Plastic Sucks!' which comes out this September.
Heart caught up with Dougie and he "spilled the beans" on the rumoured McFly reunion as well as telling us what Sir David Attenborough is like in the flesh.
Read more: McFly's Danny Jones admits he "misses his wife" since she gave birth to son Cooper
His book, which is all about "making environmentalism and recycling sound not boring" is one of the many steps he's taking to try and tackle the younger generation's attitude towards plastic.
When asked what inspired him to write the book, Dougie said: "I’ve always been interested in natural history ever since I was a kid.
"I’ve worked with WWF, gone to Africa and raised awareness with the gorillas and I’ve always done what I can."
He continued: "I know it’s hard to break old habits but it'd be amazing if we could teach the younger generation of gatekeepers the same way as they’ve done in places like Germany where they’ve had it taught in their school systems since the 50s and 60s so they all just do it automatically.
"I try to be as optimistic as possible and I genuinely think we can make a difference if we change the way we think."
When asked about what steps we can all take to help with our environmental impact, the philanthropist stated that it's important for us to cut our single-use plastic consumption: "if we cut it down by 20 per cent that’ll be enough for us to keep up with the amount the ocean is spitting back out at us".
Dougie Poynter - Plastic Sucks! - announcement
One of Dougie's lifelong idols is Sir David Attenborough, and he's been lucky enough to have met him on a number of occasions. The 31-year-old called him "the voice of God" and admitted that he "doesn't really want to talk about anything but nature".
He continued to praise the natural historian, gushing: "he’s everything you want him to be and more, words can’t describe how amazing that man is in the flesh."
As festival season is now well underway, Dougie wanted to highlight how we as festival-goers can make a conscious effort to save the planet.
He said: "One thing that really shocks me about festivals are how may tents are left behind, around 250,000 tents were left behind at festivals in the UK last year.
"More than 50 per cent of people have admitted to leaving their tents because they thought someone else would clean it up or it would go to charity and it doesn’t, it just ends up in a landfill."
He even admitted that "it is a pain" to take down a tent at the end of festival: "he last thing you wanna do after four days at a festival when you’re hanging is take down a tent that you can’t fit back in the bag because nothing makes sense when you’re that hungover."
Essex-born Dougie admits that "it’d be rad if that was a deposit place or a recycling centre when you’re leaving the festival" as he feels like "loads of people think this already happens and their tents will be donated to homeless shelters but they don’t."
The McFly is hot news on everyone's lips after Dougie let slip earlier this year that it was on the cards, however, when asked about it he coyly replied with: "I cannot confirm not deny that McFly are back together".
He continued: "People may be talking but people say lots of things, myself included, constantly spilling beans without meaning to."
But he reminisced over the band's old material, quipping that: "The older I get the more I love the really old McFly stuff.
"There’s this one song called ‘That Girl’ and it's so innocent and charming cause I was so young at the time."
When asked about settling down with his girlfriend Maddy Elmer and whether or not he's thought about becoming a father, he said: "Yeah I’ve thought about it, I have a girlfriend but we don’t have children".
